Chapter 2

Two

Josh

O f all the things I thought I might come home to, this one wasn’t on the list.

“He’s here?”

"Yes." Her voice lowers. "He’s in the kitchen with Carl. Ezra, you remember."

I can't help a soft laugh, which hurts my head. "Yeah, Mom. I remember his name."

"His talks with Coach Nix went very well, and apparently they want him here a few weeks early. So he can start practice."

"Okay." I nod, gritting my molars as I try to keep my face from looking headachy.

"He's been quiet,” she murmurs. “Very polite. Having you here will break the ice." She smiles brightly, and her hand comes up to touch my ball cap. "One blond and one brunette."

"Is his hair blond?" Ezra didn't come down when my mom and Carl got married last year at a nice old house here in town. Carl doesn’t have a ton of pictures of the guy, and in most of them, Ezra is wearing a football helmet .

"Well, dark blond," she says. "You'll see."

She waves me into the foyer, and I set my keys atop the shelf to the right. I glance up the carpeted stairs. Empty. Then I blink around the family room to my left.

"C'mon." A wave of nausea hits me as Mom leads me past the cozy, tan suede couch and Carl’s burgundy armchair in the family room, and then on through the dining room. A swinging door adjoins the dining room and kitchen, and as soon as she pushes it open, I hear a male voice.

Something happens as I move through the doorway. I don't even know what. Like my neck and head are buzzing with heat. I step into the kitchen, and my mom looks back at me.

"I'm surprised you guys weren't out there today," she's saying to me over her shoulder. She shifts her weight, moving out of my line of sight, and my eyes lock onto him.

He's standing on the other side of the granite-topped island, holding one of the glasses my mom and Carl bought when they got married. And his lake water eyes are staring a hole in me.

OH MY MOTHERFUCK, IT’S brIDGE GUY. The crazy, ungrateful fucker who threw me off the trestle bridge is right here in my fucking kitchen. I can’t speak or move as my brain struggles to connect things.

"Josh," my mother prompts.

I mutter, "Hey." I hold my hand up in a weird, robotic wave. "I'm Josh. Miller."

"Josh Miller," Carl says, smiling from across the island, where he's scooping cheese dip out of a pewter dish thing. "Josh Miller is a pretty good guy," he tells Ezra. "He'll hook you up. Introduce you to the cool kids. He knows all the girls, too."

Something flickers on the guy’s face. It's there then gone, and then he's nodding, his mouth pressed flat, his mouth looking like I kind of want to bite it.

I blink, nodding lamely.

Now his mouth twists into a smirk, one cheek tugging upward so he looks amused...or maybe derisive.

"That's good," he says, and his voice is raspy—like he just choked on lake water, smoked a cigarette, and maybe jumped back in again.

Mom says, "I figured if Ezra drove over to look out on the lake, he’d see the lot of you boys under the trestle bridge or at Snake Island, with your boats all tied together like you do, playing that music…”

I nod, barely looking at my mother. "We weren't down there."

There it is—I see his relief. Something his brows do.

"He went swimming by the point. Dove right in. Isn't that right, Ezra?"Carl arches his brows, looking fatherly.

"That's right." Ezra gives my mom a smile that somehow actually looks charming.

"You two boys will have to go together sometime,” Mom says.

Yeah, right. Maybe next time, we’ll both get run over by a train.

I blink, and my mom is looking at me like I should say something. "Yeah,” I manage. “That'd be great."

Mom smiles in a very mom-like way. As if she's proud of all of us, for doing nothing but standing here in the kitchen.

"Josh, Ezra never did go upstairs when he first got here a few hours ago. Did you, Ezra? Got here and then he set right off."

Ezra—that’s the lunatic’s name—shakes his head. How the hell did he roll up at my house, not even bother to see his own bedroom, and end up on the damn train trestle bridge?

"Why don't you show him upstairs?” Mom asks me. “You can show him where you keep the soap and shampoo and all that good stuff. We got two of everything—even though I know you may have brought your own,” she tells him. “Your towels are blue. Joshua's are gray."

Ezra arches a brow, doing something that I guess should be a smile, but it looks...like he thinks my mother's crazy. I feel a flash of sympathy for Mom before he lifts his chin just like the other football players at my school do when I pass one in the hall. And he says, "Joshua."

"I'm sorry— Josh ." My mother does her phony telephone laugh, the one that's supposed to make strangers like her.

I give her a flat-lipped, wide-eyed ugh look, then lead the way back through the dining room into the family room—maybe a little bourgeois with its white built-in shelving and Carl's giant big screen TV. But maybe Ezra wouldn't think so. I can feel him behind me. I glance over my shoulder, finding him a few paces back. His face is grave—almost angry.

"What?" I say as we move through the foyer, toward the staircase.

"What?" he echoes.

Now there's definitely an edge in his voice.

"What's your deal, man?" I start up the stairs; I feel him like a shadow, and I’m not sure how much I like the vibe I’m getting from the guy.

"I don't have a 'deal,' man ." I look back over my shoulder, finding he's got one eyebrow quirked. Fuck, he's gorgeous. I don't know how I got so unlucky, but he looks like a fucking model. Tall and lanky, scowly, broad up top but lean like maybe he's been locked up in a cage and starved for just a couple of weeks. There's muscle under his pale skin, but he makes me feel porky.

"You gonna keep on walking or just eye fuck me?"

I'm so unglued, my eyes cling to his as I struggle to find words. Then I realize what he just said. I can feel my face flame.

"Dude, I'm not eye fucking you."

"God hates fags, eh?"he says.

I'm stepping onto the second floor landing, and I nearly trip. "What?" I whirl around to face him. My heart's pounding like a damn drum.

"God hates fags, yeah? This is Alabama,” he says.

"You're from Virginia."

"Yes." He gives a deadpan blink, and my heart misses some beats.

"Is that what you think?" I manage.

"What do you think?" He smirks, but it's mean now.

"I don't know."

"Cat got your tongue, Joshua?"

I realize with a jolt that I don't like him. We're three feet from my bedroom door—the door on the right just after you top the stairs—and I don't like him at all.

I blink, trying to set my face to neutral. "No, Ezra. That's not what I think."

He smirks like he's just been teasing.

"Well" —he waves at the second-floor hall— "get on with it."

I grit my teeth, fighting down a heavy, roiling feeling in my stomach as I step into the hall.

“My room.” I wave at it. “Closet.” I nod at the door directly in front of us. Then I walk leftward down the short hall, pointing upward at the square punched into the ceiling. “Attic.” I wave toward my right. “And right here is your—” room, I’m going to say, but his raspy chuckle interrupts me.

“Check this out.”

I turn to him with a glare, narrowing my brows as he smiles faintly at a framed portrait of mom and Carl and me at their wedding.

"Joshua in tux."

"My name's not Joshua."

"No?" His lips twitch.

"Everyone but my mother calls me Josh. All my friends call me Miller—because there's another Josh. Josh Byrd."

"Another Josh?" He quirks a brow, smirking again, and I can’t do this for another second .

"You realize you almost fucking killed us both? I hit my head on my boat?"

His face hardens as I point to my head. "I don't even remember getting into the boat. Then you just left. I was passed out. My fucking back is sunburned."

"Yeah, because I rolled you over face-down. Pretty damn pale for a boater boy,” he says.

"Then why'd you roll me over, exposing my largest land mass to the sun?"

"So you don’t sprout more freckles."

I search his face for some flaw, wanting to snap back like we're in third grade.

"Yeah, I don't have freckles, boat boy." He smirks.

"Also don't have a brain.” I throw up my hands. “What did you think would happen when the train came?"

"How do you think I'm standing here?” he asks. “I stepped out on one of the side rails, wrapped myself around it. Would have been fine except I had to jump in after your ass."

Those words from his lips make my cheeks and neck warm, but I keep my face impassive. "You pushed me in! That's why you had to jump in after. You pushed me off a bridge and made me hit my head on a boat!"

He lifts one of his shoulders. "Seems like it came out okay." Then the smirk is back, pulling his full lips into something that's both smile and pout. "Unless you need some help with your head. Want big brother to pull off your wittle hat and put on a Band Aid?"

I scoff. "Big brother? So I guess you were spying on me from the trestle bridge."

"I didn't know you till I pulled your wallet from your pocket, Do Gooder." My head hurts so bad, I’m confused—but I realize he must have done that after pulling me into the boat.

"What were you doing up there anyway?" I ask.

He blinks, apathetic. "Aren't you going to show me my room?"

I want to punch him in his model face. Ask if he's going to be a moody dick the whole time we're sharing a bathroom. But I take a breath and remind myself that he's the one who's new here. I don't know much about why, beyond that he asked Carl if he could come live here. From what my mom said, he's an all-state quarterback from Richmond. Which seems weird considering he clearly smokes and does a bunch of dumb shit. I guess he's got problems.

All the more reason to be nice , my conscience tells me.

"Sure." I open the door to his room. His space is bigger than mine—because it was originally supposed to be a guest room and also my mom's home office. The walls were cream, but now they're pale gray. On the shorter, left wall, there's a full-sized bed with a comforter set that's navy, gray, and white, flanked by two metal-looking nightstands. The longer wall, which he shares with our jack and—er, jack —bathroom, has a big-ass dresser with a mirror, plus a cushy arm chair with a crocheted football pillow on it.

"You crochet, huh?"

When I frown back over my shoulder at him, he's grinning smugly.

"Uh, I know how," I hedge.

His mouth opens, and I can tell by his laugh that he was just kidding. "No shit?"

"I mean, my mom owns a gift shop and clothes store."

"So you're the sweat shop?"

"No. But I know how. It's not that hard to do."

He walks into the room and over to the pillow, giving it a squeeze. "Nice work there, DG."

I inhale slowly through my nose and watch as he sinks into the arm chair. Looking at him makes my mouth dry.

"So this is it." He taps long fingers on the chair's arm. I'm pretty sure his eyebrows tighten when he looks at the bed; maybe he doesn't like the bedspread. Then he's looking at the framed mossy oak photo above it.

"The photo. You do that, too?"

I swallow. I don't know why I can't say “yes.” But I can't. "Someone else,” I say. “I know you're disappointed."

He looks me up and down. "Your mom said you play soccer?"

I nod, and then step back before he makes some dumbass comment about the way I look. He's tall and lanky, but he's still hard—lean but muscular. I'm at least two inches shorter, and I've got muscle, too, but I like cornbread and pie and shit. He’s built like Machine Gun Kelly. I'm like young Ben Affleck.

I realize he's staring at me and blink. "Your dad got you this." I motion to the Bose player atop his dresser. "And an Apple Watch. I think it's in the drawer of your nightstand."

"Thanks for setting me up, DG. When you gonna show me the girls?" He's smirking again.

"When do you want me to?" He fucking would be straight, and one of those can't-keep-it-in-his-pants types.

He shrugs. "I’ve got no plans."

"I thought you were here early for football practice."

"Weekdays." He drums his fingertips against the chair's arm again, looking like a sultan on his throne. I notice he's wearing black basketball shorts and a green T-shirt now; he's had a wardrobe change since the lake.But his hair is nearly dry. I realize, with some shock, that maybe I was knocked out for longer than I realized.

"Uh, there’s something tonight,” I hear myself say. “If you want to go. This thing at Mason's house. He's a guy from our class."

There's also something tomorrow night at my friend Brennan’s house, but I'm not telling him that shit. I assume tonight will be too soon, and he’ll decline the invite.

I'm surprised when he says, "Sure thing."